


bright smoke, cold fire

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Biopunk, Dancing, Dystopia, M/M, Party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3113960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"You." Romeo returned his attention to Tybalt, poking him in the chest for emphasis before he could flinch away. "You are altogether too severe as well. It's a party, isn't it? Or are you security, too serious to smile on the job?"</i>
</p><p>  <i>"You might say that."</i></p><p>  <i>"Well," said Romeo, "Half Verona's partying. Even Capulet can't object to one little dance."</i></p><p>A meeting at a ball on biopunk dystopia Verona.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bright smoke, cold fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apfelstrudelz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apfelstrudelz/gifts).



> So this is sort of a bit of a Tybalt-POV missing scene from, uh, the Julia-POV biopunk AU for you that I haven't finished yet (this year it is Priority #1!). I hope it makes enough sense without reference to the rest.
> 
> We open in biopunk space dystopia Verona, a Company planet run by CEO Escalus, where people live in habitat domes and Families fight bitter feuds over valuable contracts...
> 
> In this story, Tybalt is 17 and Romeo is 18, Romeo's doomed affair with Rózsa is just beginning, Tybalt's father is still alive, and it's a few years before they'll reach the events of canon.

Tybalt deposited Julia with her parents, feeling a little as if he was abandoning her to be devoured by her own writhing biosculpted hair and the oil-slick monstrosity of a birthday gown his aunt had forced her into. Or at least by Family ambition—Julia Capulet, fourteen and beautiful and heir to Capulet Security, the greatest prize on Verona, on display to prospective buyers for the first time. She had given him a pleading look as he left, which only made him feel worse for abandoning her. But already his head was beginning to pound, the orange and gold lanterns swaying over the dance floor blurring and wavering in his vision. Every so often a shower of sparks fell from one of the firebird constructs swooping around the transparent ceiling, and he had to force himself not to look up. It was too easy to fall into a trance watching that kind of thing, even without the low pounding throb of the music and the press of too many bodies.

Unfortunately his favorite dark corner was already occupied when he arrived, by a girl with scarlet curls and sweeping white wings whose skin shimmered like pearl in the lanternlight—Julia's friend Rózsa, with whom he shared polite but cool terms—and a dark-haired boy whose eyes flashed green-gold as a cat's in the dim light when he looked up at Tybalt's arrival. A curiously subtle biosculpt in these showy times, Tybalt thought, nodding to Rózsa with as much courtesy as he could muster.

"There's room for three," the boy murmured, holding out a hand to him with a smile sweeter than anything the Company could sculpt in its labs. He blinked slow, lazy—was he on poppy tears already, so early in the evening? Or only drunk? The girl stiffened, tugging her hand away from his and settling her wings around herself in a cloud of affronted white.

"There is _not_ ," said Rózsa. "I won't—no offense, but you're my best friend's cousin. And you, Romeo, should sober up before you embarrass yourself."

"I'm perfectly sober," he said to her retreating back. "Only drunk on love, sweet Rózsa. Beauty starved by severity cuts beauty off from all posterity!"

"I'll keep that in mind," she muttered, with an eyeroll for Tybalt's benefit.

Romeo was, Tybalt decided, utterly ridiculous. Even for a Montague—he remembered now, where he'd seen that smile before—the Montague boys were in the newsfeeds on a near-weekly basis, most recently for a foray into the Restricted Sector that had landed them a few nights in confinement with the CEO's security goons, in the vain hope that enforced boredom would make them think twice. They were clowns with no sense of duty to their family, which left Tybalt torn between contempt and relief that they were, in fact, harmless.

"You." Romeo returned his attention to Tybalt, poking him in the chest for emphasis before he could flinch away. "You are altogether too severe as well. It's a party, isn't it? Or are you security, too serious to smile on the job?"

"You might say that."

"Well," said Romeo, "Half Verona's partying. Even Capulet can't object to one little dance."

"This Capulet might." Tybalt watched Romeo's eyes widen. But the boy didn't pull back his hand, and after a moment Tybalt took it. It was a distraction from thinking about Julia, or about his aunt, her shimmerscales rippling with the cool colors of unhappiness even as she smiled and laughed with her guests and prepared to sell her daughter away. Certainly it was better than thinking about his father, the man everyone expected Tybalt to be.

He pushed the thought away and made himself meet Romeo's laughing cat-eyed gaze. The hand against his was warm, the grip sure. It was only one dance, after all.

* * *

The only comfort Tybalt found, later, was that Romeo couldn't have been involved in the data theft, because when the lights went out he was pressing Tybalt up against a wall and kissing him, long and sweet and more gently than Tybalt would have liked. In this, if nothing else, he knew how to be serious. He kissed as if Montague and Capulet didn't matter. Maybe to him it didn't, because the Montague boys had always been fools, a loud and public distraction while their mother wheeled and dealed and tried to get her hooks into the CEO. They were holo heroes, not real players in Verona's game.

The week began with aunt and uncle shouting at each other over the breakfast table, followed by coexistence in frosty silence while Julia stared into her bowl like it held the secret to getting off Verona. His father's practiced smile did nothing to disguise his fear. It ended with Tybalt's father cold and stiff in his rooms, hemlock in his cup like some ancient philosopher—the old bastard had always had the family taste for melodrama. Of course someone had to take the blame for such a disaster, for not taking better precautions, for not catching the fatal loophole in the code. If Capulet Security couldn't take care of its own, who would purchase their products? And so it had to matter to Tybalt now, Montague and Capulet, in more than the old way of nasty words and scuffles in the fencing club.

The Montagues killed his father, his aunt told him that morning with the tears still drying on her face, and he knew his duty to his blood.

**Author's Note:**

> Most definitely inspired by Kocsis Dénes' Romeo asking Tybalt to dance at the Capulet ball, heh.


End file.
